Destiny Wears the Blue Dress
by Catie Cass
Summary: The French say a witch's magic is as unique as the hands that wave the wand. To ten-year-old Amandine, that uniqueness proves troubling: every Beauxbatons student can cast a spell; Amandine, however, hears the voices of casters in the residual magic that drenches the castle. What one voice has to say, however, may change the course of wizarding history—if Amandine dares to listen.
1. The Infancy of Miserable Souls

**Chapter One: L'enfance des **Â**mes Mis**é**rables**

_The Infancy of Miserable Souls_

Amandine felt the palace before she saw it. Pale yet brooding, gentle yet fierce— as the carriage shuddered across what she could only assume was a bridge onto the grounds, her body and mind alike were wracked with a sudden cacophony of contradictions.

Accepting yet elitist. Pure yet tainted. Amandine's head was beginning to throb as it filled with voices that didn't quite scream out the words now flooding her mind. She closed her eyes and clenched her throat, doing her best to force down the saliva that had suddenly begun to pool in her mouth. Beautiful yet charred. Amandine retched. She was just barely holding herself together.

People were staring, but if she did anything more than sit and wait it out, she was sure she was going to vomit, and then nothing would have been solved.

The front wheels of the carriage hit a rut, shaking the cavernous thing to its core. Amandine, who could hardly hold herself up anymore, connected with the person next to her, but she couldn't even move her body. The event was met with giggles and snickers, and for a moment, Amandine's brain couldn't even pull together the energy to register what was going on. In a moment's time, however, she found that her hands had latched onto the side of the pair of legs she'd managed to rest her head on. Spluttering and holding back her own pre-vomit, drool at the same time, she shot up only to slam into the back off the carriage's wooden benches. Her head met solid wood, and a whimper escaped her— and her lunch was only a hair's width away from following. Carefully avoiding the lap of the older student she'd fallen onto, she anchored herself via a hand on the bench.

_Please, please let this end,_ Amandine begged to the whispering mess of voices in her head. Too nauseous to even attempt to rationalize them, she hung her head and pursed her lips, then closed her eyes.

Vaguely, as if she was hearing them through a tunnel, the sound of nervous giggling penetrated Amandine's consciousness. She braved a glance to the side. The gaggle of what looked to be third-year girls opposite where she'd fallen over had scrunched together into a single writhing mass of mockery, playfully doing their best to fend off the future possibility of Amandine's meal landing on their shoes. Amandine understood the reaction, but she had to force her eyes shut again to calm the motion sickness and the voices in her head before she could shoot them a spiteful look in reply to their whispers. Even if they didn't fully deserve it... Amandine didn't have the energy to argue with herself about letting her petty side loose every once in awhile.

The whispers continued to crescendo, the carriage continued to shake, and Amandine kept hanging onto her seat. She had more space, now that the girls beside her had bunched up to get away from her, so she moved her left hand out a bit further to give her a wider base in a halfhearted effort to keep herself from falling over again. At last, the shaking stopped, but not without nearly sending the tiny first-year through the bench opposite her. Were it not for a nearby hand jutting out to stop her, she was sure she would have become a puddle on the floor. She wanted to open her mouth to utter some form of thanks, but all that came out was a groan, which elicited a round of laughter from the students around her. This time, it wasn't mocking but knowing, not unlike a mother's escaped giggle at the sight of her daughter wearing makeup for the first time.

Amandine's face turned a bright red, but she couldn't even bring a hand up to her face to cover her embarrassment. Now, in addition to possibly vomiting, drooling, and having her head explode from the pain of motion sickness, she was about to cry, too.

The hand left her shoulder as the student beside her stood up to leave the carriage, and her face turned an even deeper shade of red. She suppose he didn't want to be fallen on again.

This first day of school was going anything _but_ how she'd imagined it.

White, blue, silver, and gold. As though the world couldn't produce anything more than the celestial colors that seemed to drown the inside of the castle, every surface seemed to emanate one of four hues. Everything, from the bright marble to the curtains to the long runner-carpets to even the damn toilets— everything was either some shade of blue or shining white, gold, or silver. As the tiny first-year stood before the mirror, trying desperately to adjust her hat so her ears didn't seem to stick out so much as to give her the general appearance of a house-elf, she wished the washrooms would show a touch of red or green to temper out the nauseating palette that surrounded her.

It wasn't that the castle was an ugly sight— in fact, what little she'd seen in the two minutes she'd spent _looking_ for the bathroom could only begin to be summarized by the word 'majestic—' but after an hour spent in a windowless carriage bus, even the slightest annoyances were threatening to bring back the nausea she'd managed to force away after disembarking the carriage. Almost immediately, she'd been engulfed in the chaos of students spreading themselves in every which direction, a cacophonous chatter even worse than the one that surrounded her on the carriage. Amandine had managed to escape it, stumbling her way past the flock of winged horses all the way to the green before another student had come to her rescue and pointed the dizzy girl in the right direction. From there, it was hardly a challenge to plot her next course of action: finding the restroom. When she'd arrived, all had gone as expected.

She looked even more a mess than she felt.

Sighing— the way her mother always called 'too mature' for a ten-year-old— the tiny girl unpinned her braid, doing her best to restrain the flyaways in a fresh one but ending up with something that resembled a pair of dog-ears stuck flat to the sides of her head than the intricate updo her mother had seemed to let flow from her fingers that morning with such ease. She bit the inside of her cheek in something of a pout and retrieved the bobby pins from the dark mess that had become her head. She'd never been able to do her own hair into much more than a ponytail, and, unfortunately, she hadn't magically gained the ability to do so in the past five minutes. Resigned to the reality of her awful hair and her elf-ears, she just raked her fingers through it and wet it until it looked reasonably smooth, smoothed her dress, and left, drawing in slow breaths as she did.

Now, the bigger predicament: she'd wandered her way to the bathroom, but she had no idea where all the other students had gone. She supposed she could wander more, but now that she wasn't about to fall over from motion sickness and hallucinated voices in her head, the idea seemed completely ridiculous.

Unfortunately for Amandine, hallways stretched out in every which way, and in her nauseous stupor, she hadn't had the presence of mind to remember which way she'd come.

She had three options: wander, stand around looking like an idiot, or try to hunt for someone else and grovel at his feet to get some help. Each sounded roughly equally futile; the first, while it had gotten her here, had a lower probability of actually succeeding now that she was actually _inside_ the endless confines of the Beauxbatons castle. The second gave her a chance to wait out the storm and catch a perhaps sympathetic older student on her way into the washroom, but it also ran the risk of having her miss the sorting ceremony, which would be both embarrassing and a disaster for the teachers to handle. The third option just made her blush. There was no way she was going to grovel at anyone's feet.

As if fate itself was reading her mind, footsteps echoed down the hall behind her. On instinct, Amandine whirled around to face the face the figure, but she stopped herself before she took another stepped forward.

She was _not_ going to beg him for help.

Amandine edged her way back toward the alcove housing the washroom and hoped the figure hadn't seen her. Anyone in his right mind would know the diminutive first-year hardly belonged where she now stood, cowering like a rabbit beside the bathroom door.

The footsteps continued, rhythmic, drawing ever closer. As they neared, Amandine edged her way into the bathroom, gripped by a sudden shyness. _Please don_'_t let him come in here. Please don_'_t let him come in here. Please don_'_t let me look like some airheaded little first-year,_ Amandine begged whatever forces had invaded her thoughts previously. She wasn't particularly superstitious, but all she could do now was hope and hide, and there weren't many options in the way of the latter.

The cruel forces had, indeed, been listening. Amandine's stomach sunk, and she rushed to start the sink to look as though she was doing something as she heard the washroom door creaking on its hinges. The footsteps joined the sound of rushing water. She pleaded— no, begged fate to let her go unnoticed. This time, luck gave in, and the footsteps passed her to make their way into the mens' restroom. Amandine let out a sigh of relief but let the water continue running over her hands for good measure.

Now. Her options. Since she was absolutely, completely, _never, ever_ going to ask the older boy for help... that left her with the options of wandering around.

That, or she could follow him back. Amandine grinned at the idea. Yes— that way, she wouldn't seem like so much of an idiot, having to ask the boy to show her the way back. Wouldn't he be heading back to the opening ceremony? She could give him a few moments to leave, then follow him on his way back. He had awfully loud footsteps, after all. There. Problem solved, with no damage to your pride.

A voice interrupted Amandine's thoughts. "Still washing your hands? Did you get something on them?"

Amandine rushed to turn off the water but only managed to flail in the process. A miserable whimper escaped her, and she finally forced her hand to connect with the handle— but not without turning the water up, first, spraying the older boy with a healthy helping of water. When she turned around to look at him, he was still covering his face. As if spacing out hadn't already gotten her into enough trouble to day, leaving her lost and looking like an idiot in the washroom, she'd sat there thinking with the water on the whole time the boy had been in the bathroom.

"I— I— I'm sorry!" she stammered, "I was, ah, just washing something, ah, washing something off. Ink. I got i-ink on my hands." That hadn't come out at all the way she'd hoped it would, so Amandine just stared at her feet, wishing the boy would disappear. She scathingly congratulated herself on making herself the single most conspicuous thing in the washroom.

Much to her surprise, he laughed a little. "Well, I hope you got it off." Amandine nodded vigorously at this in an effort to get him to shut up, but she had no such luck. "Hoping to make a good first impression for the sorting ceremony?"

Great. Now he was having a conversation with her. Brushing the water from his uniform, the boy moved to the sink and began washing is own hands. Amandine supposed she could just leave, but that would be rude. With a slight turning in her stomach, she recalled how she'd looked on the bus. She hoped he hadn't seen her there. He must already have pegged her as a complete idiot with the way she was stuttering— like she needed another reason to make him hate her even more. Amandine's ego was beginning to ache already.

"Not too talkative?"

_No,_ thought Amandine, glowering at her feet, _I just don_'_t think you need to hear any more of me._ She afforded him a small, grudging smile, however, keeping her venomous thoughts to herself. If she just left, she'd be losing her chance to find her way back to the main hall, but if she stayed, she was sure she'd lose what little composure she'd managed to regain after the carriage ride to the castle.

The boy's voice rudely shook her thoughts and dragged them back into reality by their tails. "That's alright. I'm sure you'll fit in just fine here. I remember I was like that the first day, too, and now look where I am," Amandine looked up at him, trying to figure out what she was supposed to be looking for. Realizing his mistake, the boy crouched down a bit so he wasn't towering a foot and a half over her. "Hey. Look here. If you ever need help," he pointed to a badge pinned to his blazer's lapel, "Just hunt me down, alright? I'm the Aube prefect. The name's Florian Dubois." As he spoke the last few words, something of a Québécoise accent snuck out, and Amandine almost cracked a smile before regaining her self-control. "Ah. But sorry. I must be holding you up. Hurry up, or we might miss the ceremony!" He stood and ruffled her hair with a playful glint in her eyes, sending another blush into Amandine's cheeks. She was _not_ going to be treated like a child.

Taking precedence over her irritation at the condescending prefect, however, was a glimmer of hope. No matter how annoying he was, he was her way back to the main hall. If she kept talking to him... a smile crossed Amandine's lips. She might look like an idiot, but she'd look less idiotic actually talking to him than blowing him off and then trying to hide and follow him back.

Casually, Amandine shifted her weight to one foot and folded her arms across her chest. "A prefect? What year are you in? You look a little young." She wasn't lying; though he was nearly six feet tall, he couldn't be much older than fourteen or fifteen. From what her mother had told her, prefects were typically only seventh- or eighth-years. A fourth-year wasn't unheard of, but if he was in his third year, the credibility of his statements were certainly up for questioning.

Florian turned around, cocking an eyebrow in what was possibly the most infuriating manner possible. "Hm? So you _can_ speak." The Canadian smiled a bit, and Amandine could see why he'd been placed in the 'dawn' house— a shining, if not a politician's lying grin, seemed only to accentuate his golden hair, which put Amandine's own mousey shade to shame. Not wanting to look at him anymore, she cast her glance askew as she waited for him to just answer her question, already. Finally, he added, "And there's no 'too young' for prefects, you know. Every year aside from yours has one for each house. I'm the fifth-year prefect."

Amandine cursed herself. Of course. She was just a stupid little first-year. She huffed, then, grudgingly, followed him. She _did_ still need to get back.

"Still. I'm surprised you made the cut. You're not exactly the most... _congenial_ of people."

Florian slowed a bit, allowing the shorter girl to catch up. "Congenial? That's a big word for such a little girl." He reached down to pat Amandine's head, but she was out of the way before he could touch a hair on her body. An expression of mock-hurt made its way across his features, and he said, "And who's to say I'm not to like? You only just met me. I wouldn't be so quick to make assumptions. For all you know, I could turn out to be a perfectly nice guy— and then you'd be missing out on a great opportunity!" Amandine rolled her eyes at this.

"Says the one whose jaw nearly fell off when I used one letter shy of my age in length. Because clearly, I need to take a lesson from you in not taking judgments." Amandine regretted saying it the moment it left her lips, so she continued staring at the floor. Insulting prefects wasn't exactly the best way to go about getting to know people, was it?

She nearly mirrored Florian's face when it morphed into an expression of genuine surprise. "Touché, Miss Congeniality. You're smarter than you look. Maybe I can forgive you for this," he smirked, pointing at the wet spot. "You see, I was planning on just eating you, like the rest of the first-years who pis— annoy me, but now I think I might keep you as a pet. How does that sound?"

Amandine meant to laugh, but she snorted instead. "No! That's even worse," the blush had returned to her face. The idea of being his pet was absolutely mortifying.

"Well, miss smarty-pants, then you'd better... _run!_" Laughing, he lunged forward. Amandine ran, away, squealing, temporarily forgetting her previous preoccupation with her composure and just letting herself giggle like the ten-year-old girl she was.

She was almost having fun. As usual, however, Amandine let her thoughts get the better of her, and in the few moments she spent not paying attention to her surroundings, her foot caught on the edge of the rug, and she went flying to the blue-clad floor.

Florian sighed. "Remind me not to recruit you for the Quidditch team. Now, let's get you sorted." Eyeing the line that had formed in the cavernous hall before them, he added, "Looks like you get to wait in anticipation for the next half hour. End of the line, Miss Congeniality."

Amandine staggered to her feet, and for a moment, she reveled in the glorious sounds of chatter and choir song that surrounded her. Her mother had told stories of the wood-nymph serenades, but the sound was infinitely more beautiful than she could ever have imagined: twisting harmonies melded with seemingly endless discord amid a sea of indiscernible words, their sweet voices filling the great hall with as much presence as an elephant yet as little weight as a cloud of vapor. For a moment, she just stood there, gaping at a scene.

And then they came back with a fury. Amandine clutched her head, her knees going weak, a ringing filling her ears and the bitter taste of bile once again filling her mouth.

No amount of beauty or glorious harmony could mask the fact that the voices had returned with a vengeance.

(Questions/comments/concerns? Especially about my French? Don't hesitate to let me know! ;p)


	2. Harmony in Discordant Whispers

**Chapter Two: Harmonie en Chuchotanat Discordants**

_Harmony in Discordant Whispers_

Through the choirs of whispering voices in her head and the sickness that swept over her, Amandine could hear only one thing: Florian's voice calling out to her from the lip of the chasm she seemed to have fallen into. Her vision had gone black, and only fuzzy flashes of light invaded her darkness with their presence. She felt a sudden weakness in her legs, but this time, unlike moments ago, there was no sensation of her body making contact with the marble before her. She was blind, in pain— not to mention humiliated. Amandine staggered a bit before her vision would return to her.

"Amandine," Florian called, "Everything okay? What happened?"

So he hadn't noticed enough to say anything but that. A hint of Amandine's worry faded away, but she couldn't quell her embarrassment at the fact that he'd even noticed. She hadn't fallen, luckily— but, then, what had she done to make him take notice of the fact that she'd suddenly been overwhelmed by a cacophony of voices screaming inside her head.

The voices were quick to remind her of their presence. In effect, she still was being overwhelmed by the voices. Amandine, however, who most certainly wasn't crazy, was quick to push them to the back of her mind. If she ignored them, maybe they'd just go away. She was probably just tired.

A hand clamped down on Amandine's shoulder, and she jumped a bit. Right. As usual, she hadn't spoken or even moved while she was lost in thought. She'd given Florian plenty of time to catch up to her, and now, the inevitable was upon her: questions. She tried to wriggle free, but he already had a hand on her shoulder.

"Stage fright?" His guess was suffixed by a small chuckle. "Don't worry, kid. In a few years, you'll be top of your class. You've got nothing to worry about."

Kid. Of course. If Florian weren't holding her shoulder down, she would have run and hidden in the crowds of students milling about the room. She'd followed the older student where she needed to go, and now she was done with social interaction. Preferably for the next month. In fact, Amandine thought, she was set for the next decade. If she could spend the next ten years holed up in a dungeon, it would beat making an idiot of herself with Florian by any stretch of logic.

"Now, really. We have to get you sorted." Much to Amandine's dismay, Florian wasn't letting go. He steered her toward the line that had formed and planted her firmly at the back of it. Amandine forced a smile onto her lips and waved him goodbye, and the older boy seemed to get the message.

She couldn't help a slight snicker to herself as she watched his form, towering in comparison with the ten-year-olds around him, fade into the background of the higher years who had come to watch the sorting ceremony. While he was a foot and a half taller than her, however, his height seemed to crop up just barely below average as he disappeared into the crowd. On second thought, he was a good four inches below six feet. Maybe even five. And how, exactly, had she thought him so tall?

Amandine hated being short. She hated being ten. She hated being in her first year. The sorting ceremony, however, being an insentient concept, didn't care, and it proceeded without regard for the misery of one of its young charges. What had she been expecting?

As Florian had been sure let her know, she was at the back of a line. What, exactly, the line was for was beyond her, as she couldn't make out much of anything beyond the sea of heads in front of her. As the room was still filled with singing and chatter, she was sure the ceremony itself hadn't yet started.

Amandine relaxed slightly, letting her shoulders slump down and her back curve into its usual slouch. As though she didn't already look ridiculous enough, her hair was even messier than before after her tumble running away from Florian, and she raked a hand through it in an attempt to straighten it out to little avail. With a huff and a flick to her skirt to smooth it, she began to take in her surroundings.

The choirs of wood nymphs she'd first heard on walking into the cavernous hall stood neatly arranged in alcoves set into the wall above the crowds. They were ageless, genderless things formed of bark and a number of other growths, all clad in uniform white garments that straddled the line between tunic and robe. It was almost ethereal, watching the tiny creatures as they moved like a circus of wooden dolls. While she had seen living dolls before— in fact, she had just recently, when her mother had taken her to the Rue Champounée buy books and supplies for school— the way they moved was far more eerie than anything she'd ever seen before.

Much like the voices whispering in the back of Amandine's mind, the wood nymphs' voices rung out through the hall, echoing off the circular room's walls, vaulting across its domed ceiling. Amandine felt dwarfed in comparison with the chamber; it easily fit the hundreds of students that now only lined its perimeter. A crowd of older students had gathered around the twin lines of first-years, drawing close yet making sure to keep their distance. The first-years stood neatly behind one another as though they'd been arranged. As she stopped to think about it, she realized that it wasn't unlikely that they _had_ been shepherded into two straight lines by the professors on their arrival.

A sudden jostling caught the entranced Amandine's attentions, and she looked up just in time to avoid a flying elbow as it came hurtling through space toward her face. Though it didn't hit her in the nose, it connected with her side, sending a sharp, stabbing pain up her abdomen. Tracing the arm back to its owner, she found that the culprit was a diminutive girl currently quite heavily engaged in a scuffle with an equally tiny boy.

"Lay off it, Colette," the boy whined, only to have aforementioned Colette aim another blow at his shoulder. The boy crossed his arms and blocked it, but just barely; from the way he flinched the next time she moved, it was clear he was in pain.

"Give it back, then," Colette retorted as she folded her arms over her chest. Were she half an inch shorter, Amandine wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between the girl with the pixie cut and the boys' dress uniform from what she took to be her twin. "Give it back, or I'll snap yours in half."

The fighting was beginning to make Amandine uncomfortable, but, in all reality, there was nothing she could do about it. She could only sit and watch as the argument escalated and the two siblings began shoving each other around. The girl was rougher, aiming her punches to hurt, while it seemed that the boy only wanted his sister to leave him alone and hit to get her to back off. Every so often, one of the hits would fly in Amandine's direction, and in a few seconds' time she was practically edging her way out of line to avoid getting hit.

Another elbow flew, this one knocking Amandine squarely in the stomach. It wasn't particularly hard, but it was hard enough to make her squeak and then cough. Tears sprung up in her eyes even though she had no good reason to cry. Just as she was on the verge of letting the twins have a quiet piece of her mind, a professor stepped in and split the two up. As the boy was dragged away, the girl stood watching him, smirking. Soon enough, however, she caught Amandine's gaze—Amandine hadn't even noticed herself staring, with half of her mind overtaken by the murmuring voices— and she turned to the shorter girl with a scowl replacing the twisted smile on her face.

"What are you looking at?" she spat, shooting a glare back at Amandine. Amandine shrunk into herself as though she could disappear that way, but it was to no avail; the girl in front of her had already taken notice of her staring, and she wasn't pleased. "God. People in this country are so rude. Didn't your mother ever teach you not to stare? Hm? Well, if you're so intent on watching, I'm sure you know just what I can do." As though it was proof of her malice, she cracked the knuckles on her right hand and sank into her hips. Her voice lowered to a whisper. "So I don't think you want to get on my bad side, huh? If I were you," she reached out a hand, and Amandine was too frozen to push it away, "I'd look away." Colette punctuated her remark with a rough shove to Amandine's chin that forced her gaze askew.

At the touch, the voices began screaming again, but Amandine was too busy holding back tears at the tomboy's sheer hatred to even realize they were there. What had she done to deserve this? Though she wouldn't admit it, she was getting a bit scared. By the time she glanced back, the girl had gone back to playing with whatever trophy she had won from her brother.

She was right. Amandine didn't want to get on Colette's bad side. The girl scared the lights out of her.

The room quieted suddenly as a woman's head crested the sea of students. It paused for a moment just shy of the center of the hall, but then it continued, up, up, until the body of a long, slender, white-haired sylph was clearly visible even from where the diminutive Amandine stood. Amandine could hear her own breathing again; the woman's presence had sent the entire hall into an uncomfortable silence.

Amandine ducked a little, already practically scared to death of the other girl. She didn't need more things to be afraid of. The white-haired sylph wasn't making her situation any better. Amandine couldn't see the woman's face—though, having just barely made it to the sorting ceremony, she didn't much blame anyone for her lacking a little information. She was glad for what she had, and she'd make the best of it, like her mother always told her. There was no point in bothering anyone about her own idiocy. She could wait this one out.

Just like that, the sylph opened her mouth. The hall was already silent, yet somehow it went even quieter. Amandine could swear the only sound breaking the uncomfortable peace was the thump-thumping of her own heartbeat. As if she could stifle it, she put her hands to her chest and sunk into herself a little more. She looked like she was about to have a heart attack, but in the moment, Amandine didn't notice.

Someone else, however, did.

There was a tap on Amandine's shoulder from behind, then a whispered, "You alright?" Blushing, Amandine perked up a bit at this, turning around abruptly to face the speaker— a tall girl with a moon-shaped face, a broad nose, and unnaturally pale hair that seemed nearly silver against the uniform's cape. Her face's odd features were overtaken by an expression of earnest worry. Amandine nodded, a motion as demure as the girl herself, and moved to turn away, but she was only met with another tap on the shoulder. "Sorry. You just looked a little ill there."

Obviously. Otherwise, the girl wouldn't have been asking her if she was alright. But Amandine didn't say anything— even if she'd wanted to, the blonde was shushed by the same professor who had broken up the twins' bickering. The sorting ceremony was beginning.

###

The low, sultry voice was the first thing Amandine noticed when the woman began speaking. Had her head not been filled with upwards of ten other voices screaming quietly at the back of her mind, she might have found it odd that she couldn't make out a single word the giantess was saying when she found her voice so clearly through the chaos.

Now that she thought about it, she wasn't feeling all that well. Maybe she shouldn't have brushed off that funny-looking girl, after all.

It felt as though her mind was falling to pieces. First, her concentration went— voices became blurs, only suggestions of the speakers' intentions. She could react to what was said, but it was almost reflexive: she laughed with the other students when something she knew was funny was said even if she couldn't hear the joke's words. She began to get nervous with the others, shuffle forward and straighten out in line to commands she couldn't make out. No matter how she shook her head, however, or tried to clear her ears, Amandine couldn't make out a single word, which was beginning to worry her.

It was as though she was trapped inside her own head.

Amandine drew in a deep breath, clearing her mind. She really was going crazy, wasn't she? First, there was the panic attack on the train, and now this. This... whatever it was. This inability to perceive. This inability to hear— or was she just unable to consciously understand? As though hearing voices in her head wasn't already bad enough. Maybe she should have told the moon-faced girl the truth. Maybe she should have admitted it: no, I'm not alright. I'm hearing voices. I'm a little whacked in the head this fine morning. And how are you today?

The lines of students began to move on as Amandine stood, lost in her own confused sort of reverie. There was no denying it: she really was going crazy. And not in whatever good ways there might be. She was going insane in the entire, "not entirely there and probably muttering to voices no one else could hear" variety. Lovely.

Amandine couldn't help glancing around to make sure the blonde was actually there.

Whatever it meant, she was there, and Amandine exhaled a slow breath to calm her heart. She wasn't all the way gone just yet.

The line shifted, dragging Amandine with it as the deep voice drew to a halt and the first set of students stepped forward. Amandine tried to follow the shadows the torches on the wall cast of them as they moved toward the front of the room, but no sooner than they flickered in did the shadows sputter out and die as the students brushed past them. From her place in line behind all the other students, Amandine couldn't see in the slightest what was going on, so she gave up. Why bother trying when she knew she was doomed to fail? It wasn't as though she was suddenly going to grow another four inches.

With a touch of envy to her glance, Amandine's gaze fell to the floor to where a gaggle of giggling girls stood in their heels. The supply list had allowed for girls to wear a pair of black heels with their dress uniform, but Amandine's mother hadn't endorsed the idea and left her with a pair of flats that were wholly too glittery and too little-girl for the likes of her. As due matter of course, she'd stripped them off the second she stepped on the train. She wore her day shoes, now— the little leather flats she'd picked up at the last second at the department store where she bought her tights and her socks and her coat.

The line shuffled forward again, and with it went Amandine. She could make out the top of a door, now, but before she could catch a glance of what was inside, someone she couldn't see over the sea of heads pulled it shut. At this, a pall of silence fell over the crowds. Even the blinded Amandine knew it: the first set of students had stepped inside to be sorted. She, too, waited with bated breath.

Again, the moon-face blonde's incessant tapping returned. Amandine turned to face the one thing she could see. Of course, the girl was grinning like an idiot. Amandine spared her a small smile back, but it was just as forced Florian's. The blonde, though, just kept on grinning.

"Yeah?" said Amandine. She caught a few glances back at her, and she lowered her voice. "Did you want something?"

"Sorry," the blonde whispered back. "Just got bored. I think we're almost to the front, though." She paused. "What's your name?"

A bit intrusive, for someone she'd met roughly five minutes ago. Still, Amandine tried not to come across as unsociable. She failed more often than she succeeded, but this time, she'd oblige. For the time being, the voices had lowered to a murmur. In terms of insanity, she'd give herself around a four out of ten. "Amandine Bellerose. You?"

"Helena Lovegood. Lovely to meet you," she announced. After a brief interlude, during which Amandine, as usual, said nothing, Helena continued. "I'm willing to bet you end up in _Crépuscule_. You're a little quiet, you know?"

As if to illustrate her point, Amandine only stared back at Helena.

"I'll even bet on it. You end up in _Aube_ House, and you can have this hairpin." she patted the plastic cherry in her hair. "My dad went to New York over the summer, and he got it at a little shop called Claire's."

"I don't think that's a bet I have a chance at winning, though. As much as that is a pretty hairpin." From what Amandine knew of houses, _Crépuscule_ seemed her sort: it housed those who retreated into the dusks of their minds. The ones who lived their lives like fireworks, with words burbling from their lips and smiles emanating from their faces—they tended to be _Aube's_ inhabitants. The sorts like her mother were the ones that ended up there. As much as she loved her mother, though, _Aube_ wasn't for her.

Before Helena could get another word in, a clock chimed, subtly, at first, then louder. A quiet melody of bells crescendoed as the tone lowered. The song it played was dark, dissonant, and it reminded Amandine of funeral bells. Helena glanced forward, too, squinting through the darkness. They'd at last shuffled forward far enough to see the stage. On a white platform, altar-like in its smoothness yet reminiscent of something more Greek in terms of architecture, a fat grandfather clock towered over the children filling the room. Though the pendulum inside swung in time with the seconds, only one hand sprung up from the clock's center, and unless the minutes or the hours pulsed backwards and forwards, receding every time they ticked forward, Amandine was sure it didn't measure time.

The hand swung back and forth between the two halves of the face, divided in two by the twin shades of foil pasted on across from one another. A flaming sunburst painted onto rosy gold sat opposite a velveteen blue night over gold of a yellower shade, and the hand, blacker than the shadows that doused the walls around Amandine and Helena, ticked from one to the other, showing no sign of stopping.

"Charles Marteau," called the sylph.

Amandine heard behind her as Helena drew in a breath through her teeth. A student, a redheaded boy with round glasses and thick lenses covering half his face, ambled up to the state and stood in front of the clock. At first, nothing happened, and as the hand continued to swing back and forth, the slump in the redhead's shoulders deepened. He seemed to recede into himself, shying away from the clock, the crowd, the lights.

Once again, though, the clock struck, and as it rang off thirteen chimes in marching beat, the hand began to slow. Night, day, night, day, night, day—and then night, for an ambling two beats, and then day for an agonizing four until the hand came to a rest on the deep blue silk that was the midnight sky on the clock's face for the final chime.

The redhead stared at the clock, and his shoulders seemed to untuck themselves a bit. The clock, it appeared, had deemed him a _Crépuscule_.

"He seemed the sort," said Helena. Amandine couldn't have agreed more. As the boy shuffled from the stage, another strode on to take his place. Helena jabbed Amandine in the shoulder. "He's really cute," she said. "He looks athletic. I say _Aube._"

Amandine shook her head. He wasn't _that_ cute. "But look at the way his eyes flicker around the room. He seems shy, too, even if he is athletic."

"It's not like he's got stage fright. Not like the last one." Helena laughed. "He seems too confident."

"We'll see about that."

The clock stood, pensive. It had returned to its regular ticking, and for a while, it stayed like that, just as it had with the last student. Again, though, it began to chime, and the students waited with bated breath for the boy to be sorted.

Again, it was a _Crépuscule_.

The line grew shorter and shorter. Colette and her brother—who did indeed have a name, Alphonse—both ended up _Aubes_; a tall, honey-skinned girl named Mira with arms like a dancer's ended up _Crépuscule_; and a chubby, waddling boy by the name of Horace found himself sorted into _Crépuscule,_ too.

Amandine hardly registered the moment the headmistress announced "Amandine Bellerose" from the scroll in her hand.

"That's you," pointed out Helena.

Amandine turned to her with a look of mock surprise. "Really?"

"No. I mean, _go._ You can't just stand there."

It wasn't that it hadn't been obvious; Amandine just didn't want to go. The thought of having all those eyes on her didn't appeal terribly to her. Then again, a good ten seconds had passed since the headmistress had called her name, and people were starting to talk. Alright, then—Amandine stepped forward. It was hardly a long walk from the line to the platform, and the staircase was like any other staircase. Still, she felt weak at the knees. If she tripped, it would be sheer nerves, not exhaustion.

Here, she was so close to the clock she could hear its ticking. The sound was rhythmic, a heartbeat, and there was a certain piercing quality to it that struck deep through her own chest. She staggered a bit, catching on her own toes. There was a moment of silence as the clock deliberated, a long one, as it seemed, though Amandine couldn't actually tell whether or not it was any longer than the last few. Amandine stood and waited.

She waited some more.

By now, she was sure she wasn't imagining it. People were murmuring again. She always tried to hold her head high, even when everyone around her was laughing, but Amandine felt the tears beginning to well up in her eyes. They'd laughed at her on the train when her stomach had nearly turned itself inside out; she'd made a moron of herself around the prefect, too. This was too much. She didn't need to stick out anymore. She could handle getting lost, but if the clock refused to sort her...

A wave of relief hit Amandine when the clock began to strike. She closed her eyes and dabbed at the teardrops built up in the corners. For someone so obviously a speck in the face of the shining sun, for a girl as predictably Dusk as Amandine, it had been an awfully odd response on the part of the clock.

She began to count down.

_Thirteen._ Dusk. _Twelve._ Dawn. _Eleven,_ Dusk. _Ten, nine, eight: _dawn, dusk, dawn. _Seven, six, five, four._ Dusk.

And then the hand just _stopped._ Right in the middle, dead straight between the foils, the hand stood. _Three, two._

_One._

Ever so slightly, the hand twitched its way to its final destination: dawn.


	3. Midday Flowers

**Chapter Three: Fleurs de Midi**

_Midday Flowers_

The voices were angry. Very angry. They screamed and thrashed, pouring into the forefront of her mind from the very borders. Amandine could hardly gather her remaining wits to stumble off the stage. She could feel their rage—it pulsed through her own veins, hot and urgent. Animalistic.

Animalistic yet refined. No—just animalistic. _Animal. The house of animals,_ they called. Amandine couldn't make out a single word, but like the rage, she felt the words as they coursed through her. The world receded into its tunnel, and she couldn't do a thing in response as a pair of hands shepherded her away from the platform. All the world was anymore was a cacophony of guiding hands and diaphanous whispers.

_Burning yet utterly lightless. Burning. She'd be burning._

Something hot ran down her cheeks. She tasted it, too. Salty. There was shouting, shouting all around her, and color and light. Other parts of her body lit up with warmth, but even they were too disembodied to register. She was feeling through someone else's hands and hearing through someone else's ears.

But the voices were very much her own.

Someone called, "Helena Lovegood," from somewhere on the other end of the tunnel. In a brief moment of lucidity, Amandine found herself searching out something to grapple onto. Helena. But as soon as the lucidity had struck her, it faded away, leaving Amandine once again in the throes of revelation. About what, exactly, she wasn't sure, but she felt the revelation, nonetheless.

_The one. The one. Yet, now, not her. You aren't._

Not what? Amandine stretched further into the recesses of her own mind in her quest for answers. For a revelation, it was shockingly unilluminating. Words, unintelligible and then, suddenly, not rushed around inside her: "She's having a fit. Don't let her choke. I'll get the nurse." _She was a sun, a moon. But no, just the sun. Not a sun-child, but a sun._ "Got something to put in her mouth?" _Traitor, traitor._ "Was she on medication?"

No. She wasn't on medication. She wasn't having a fit. The hands ushered her somewhere, anywhere, and suddenly, she felt a softness all around her. There was just softness and warmth, now.

Softness and warmth.

Somewhere along the way, consciousness escaped Amandine, and she slipped into the chaos. Her mind, still, was very much her own, but beyond that, she was nothing.

###

When Amandine awoke, it was silent. Not even the voices in her head had a word to say. She was in an empty room—that was fairly obvious. Beyond that, though, she had no idea where she was. She was lost again, and this time, no prefect was coming wandering in to save her. The room itself was stark, sterile, though filled with shelves and countless potions that glittered like potions as the lamplight struck them. Here, light was sparse, though, and beyond the flickering circle cast by the gas lamp on the bedside table, darkness consumed everything in its path.

The silence, like the darkness, was pressing. Last she could remember, her thoughts were the loudest she'd ever heard, and yet now, she'd never felt so empty. Had the madness left her?

Even as she pushed herself up to sitting, the voices kept quiet. Part of Amandine was relieved, but the more savvy bit of her couldn't help but worry over the sudden absence of calamity. She'd always heard the phrase, "calm before the storm," but only now did it start to register with her. Something was off. The voices, though trying, had at least had their air of normalcy. This was just… off.

Amandine tried to stand, but her legs wobbled enough beneath her already when her feet hit the ground. She sank back down in submission. There'd be no walking around for her. Not for awhile. A shame, too, after she'd just been sorted. _Aube_… it had to be a mistake. The clock had been on the verge of _Crépuscule,_ Amandine could swear, but at the last moment, it had shifted, albeit just barely, to _Aube._ It was within the breadth of a mistake. A strong gust of wind could have pushed it.

Even if the headmistress herself brought every scrap of evidence in the world against this being a mistake, something about it just felt wrong. The voices had screamed at her, but in a sense, they'd been screaming for themselves, too. They'd wailed as though they'd lost someone—something—hope. Hope for what, Amandine couldn't tell. But there was something hopeless in their cries.

Grabbing the lantern, Amandine searched the room from her cot. The sheets were thin, the sort of sterile, standard-issue linens usually found in a school. Her best guess was that she was in an infirmary. The shelves surrounding her, though, crammed with everything from jewel-colored potions to cleaning supplies, reminded her of a closet. The light hit a wall before Amandine could extend her arm much further than halfway on either side. Forward, though, the room seemed to continue on for a ways. The path in that was clear and wide enough for two or three. If she couldn't walk, now, for whatever reason, she certainly hadn't made her way her by herself.

When the people who brought her to the infirmary would be returning was beyond her, however.

With nothing else left to do, Amandine ticked her way through a quick checklist in her head. Shoes? No—though a quick scan with the lantern revealed they'd been tucked away next to the wall with her jacket. Her shirt was still intact and no dirtier than it had been during the ceremony. She still had both her socks, which was saying something, since she'd lost one at the airport that summer.

As usual, her hair felt like a mess.

After a few minutes of running off every possible object that could have anything to do with her own person, Amandine gave up and let the silence overtake her once again.

Only through that silence were the voices able to penetrate. They gave Amandine a jump; at first, she clutched her head, willing them to go away, but after a few moments, she realized they were human. That, and she recognized one.

Amandine could already feel her ears turning red. Florian. Of course. Now that that moron of a clock had sorted her into _Aube_, he was one of her prefects. Who he was talking to, though, was beyond her. The voice was female but utterly unrecognizable.

There was a knock at the door. Amandine wasn't entirely sure where that door was. Regardless, she called back, "Go ahead." She was decent, and, in all honesty, she couldn't wait to leave the room.

The door cracked open, and light flooded in from the end of the hallway.

"This is the room, right?" said the girl. She had something of an accent, too—was that a theme among the prefects? There was Florian, the Canadian, and then there was the African girl. She was nearly Florian's height and perhaps more muscular than he was, though her shoulders seemed so delicately fae. A frenzy of dark curls struggled free from the bun that restrained them. "I think this is a storage closet."

Florian's silhouette shrugged. "Still. This is was the room number professor Helson gave me."

"You know, you don't _always_ have to do what you're told. You could just use your own brain. Independence is a virtue, too." The girl pulled her wand out. "I get your point, though. Might as well give it a look through. But I swear, if we don't find anything, and you go hunting down more closets, I might think you were up to something."

Amandine couldn't quite tell in the darkness—the two were no more than silhouettes—but it seemed as though the girl was smirking. A moment of silence passed between them, and Florian turned away. "Stop. There could be a kid in here."

The girl prefect laughed. "I'm joking. Don't be so," she threw her hands in the air, searching for the right word. She didn't find it. "You don't have to be so serious."

_Yeah. Right here,_ thought Amandine. She was tempted to raise her hand and capture the prefects' attention, but she couldn't muster the courage to do it. Somehow, she felt guilty, as though she was eavesdropping. To an extent, she was, though, to her defense, there was no walking away from this. Literally. She sat up and peered around the shelves to get a clearer glimpse of the prefects. They stood in the doorway, Florian with a handful of papers in crumpled in his hand.

The girl raised her wand. Florian held a hand out to stop her.

"Not in here," he said. The girl raised her eyebrows at him, but he only gestured to the ceiling in response. Amandine glanced upwards. Something—a ward, a seal, something round and complex chalked on the ceiling in white—hung over their heads. "Unless you _want_ the magic sucked out of you."

The girl shook her head. "Alright, alright. But I don't have a flashlight."

That was alright. Amandine'd had enough of sitting around and listening to the two talk about her. She pulled the lantern from its home on the table beside her cot and raised it to eye level. Held far forward enough, the light flickered its way down the hallway just far enough to illuminate the pair as the girl elbowed Florian in the side.

"I see it," he said absently, squinting into the darkness. He called out to her, albeit softly, from the end of the hallway. "You alright?"

Amandine nodded; though, realizing there was a chance they couldn't see her, she soon spoke up. "I'm fine," she replied. It was something of a lie, but it wasn't a black one. She didn't feel the worst. Her head still pounded, but she had enough wits about her to function.

On hearing the voice, Florian leaned forward. "Is that—" his eyes widened in recognition. "Daria," he whispered to the girl. "That's not the Elaeric kid." The other prefect cast a glance over to Amandine, though Amandine herself wasn't sure why.

"Isn't it?" she asked.

"She's as brown-haired as they come. And besides," he said, the slightest of smiles creeping into his tone, "I met her on the way to the sorting ceremony. She seemed fine on the way, though." His eyes tipped back to the top of his head as he strained to remember something.

"For one of the Elaerics, I don't think I'd question their putting her underneath an Absorption Ward, but," Daria stepped toward Amandine, "Who are you?"

"Amandine Bellerose," admitted Amandine.

"Never heard of her. Must have been one Hell of a fit you had, huh?"

Amandine shrugged and glanced back at Florian. She could feel a touch of heat pulse through her cheeks. Next thing she knew, she'd end up burning off her eyebrows in front of that guy. He was like her bad luck charm. First, there had been her rolling in her own idiocy on the way to the ceremony, and now, there was…_this._ And even she didn't know what this was.

Florian's eyes had focused again, though they'd flickered up to the ward on the ceiling. "They threw her in here, for whatever reason. I don't know. But they must know what they're doing, to put her in here and not in the infirmary. It's anything but full." He waved the papers, both at Daria and at Amandine. "Let's just get this over with. We don't need to go toying around with motivations."

"You're no fun," Daria whined.

Ignoring her, Florian beckoned for the lantern. Amandine obliged, and he squinted to make out the words in the soft light. "Professor Helson sent us to check you over before tonight," he said. Amandine didn't know who Professor Helson was, but she assumed he was someone important. Silently, she repeated the name to herself. Might as well commit it to memory.

Florian paused. In the silence, Amandine wondered if she was supposed to say something. They spent another few wordless seconds staring at the papers and the wall, respectively, before Amandine finally opened her mouth to speak.

"Tonight? What's tonight?"

Florian shook his head. "Nothing. It's nothing." Of course, even Florian, the glowing blond with a politician's grin, couldn't keep the Band-Aid tone from his voice. Daria rolled her eyes from her haunt against the wall. "There are, ah, traditional beginning-of-year activities the first night, and Professor Helson wanted to make sure you were in sound enough health to…join."

Daria sighed. "If you're going to do such a terrible job of covering it up, you might as well just tell the kid."

Florian made a face at her.

"Anyway. It's just a health check. I'll just ask you a few questions, and after that, you have permission to leave," he continued. His finger slid to the first question on the list. "Do you now, or have you ever, experienced regular fits, seizures, or losses of consciousness as a result of any diagnosed magical condition?"

Amandine's ears burned red. The questions were awfully personal. As far as she knew, she hadn't, and she said so.

"Do you now, or have you ever, experienced regular fits, seizures, or losses of consciousness as a result of any diagnosed non-magical condition?"

Again, Amandine replied with a "no." She was healthy enough. Didn't the school have her medical forms, anyway? She'd gone to the doctor's just the month before, and all he'd remarked on was that she was still so short. As of now, her ego was a bit bruised, and her head hurt a little, but otherwise, she was fine.

Well, that, and the fact that she wasn't sure she could keep her balance if she tried to walk. But that was just the headache. She was sure she'd be fine. It would only cause the school trouble if she were anything but healthy, and causing trouble in the infancy of her life as a student would only make things worse. The questions ambled on, and they'd tapered off by the time she'd given everything from her current physical status to a shallow medical history to this pair of strangers. How was her breathing? Fine, evidently. Heart rate? Daria took Amandine's pulse when she shied away from Florian. She knew how to do it herself, but evidently, the prefects didn't trust her. That wasn't what they said outright, but Amandine caught it in bits and pieces in the way Daria scrutinized her after every answer.

After a few minutes, thankfully, they'd run out of questions. Daria turned to leave, ever the ice sculpture with her businesslike gait and tense posture. Florian flashed a small smile before he, too, turned back down the hall. Amandine couldn't help but notice that the smile wasn't quite as cloying as the last. As much as she appreciated that, though, she was just glad he was gone.

That was too personal. Entirely too personal. There hadn't needed to be two prefects coming to check up on her—no, not even one. Still, Amandine couldn't shake the feeling of something being off. Aside from the voices, and, then, the lack thereof, and the fact that she'd been sorted into _Aube,_ and the fact that she'd been shoved in a storage closet after evidently having passed out…

Was it even ethical for those two to have asked her all those questions? But, then again, she'd answered them freely enough. Amandine had to admit she didn't know much about ethics.

All she was was a silly little first-year. One who'd passed out after getting sorted, at that.

And then it hit her. The so-called "beginning-of-year activities," as Florian had put it. Her mother hadn't said a word about that. They'd bought her wand and her robes and her uniform, and they'd piled up the textbooks in the little river-carts hovering about in the waterways between the endless aisles at Babette's Bookshop, and she'd shared stories of her own first day, but the one thing her mother had left out was mention of any sort of ritual.

She guessed they hadn't been talking about the feast.

Confined to a bed, Amandine wasn't going to get anywhere, literally or with regards to her own ignorance. Her own words still spun in her head, but there were no voices. Though the silence was almost stranger than the chatter, at this point, she considered just falling asleep. They'd said she'd been free to leave, but by no means was she obligated to do that, if she was going to twist their words. She wasn't sure she'd be able to walk in the first place.

As she laid her head back, Amandine couldn't stave off the anxiety taking root in her fingertips. It was an itching, first; for what, she wasn't sure. Her fingers needed to do something, and, soon enough, her whole hands ached to be free. In the course of five minutes, she'd departed from content enough to bored out of her mind. She wasn't sure when she'd begun examining the patterns in the floor, but it was sign enough that she needed up.

She swung her legs over the bed and had to catch herself before she tumbled out. There was something very, very long with her balance. Amandine's ears began to ring again, and for a moment, a burst of fear slid through her veins—the voices were back. After a few moments of sitting still, it faded.

She'd have to take it slowly. Walk up the gradual incline.

Amandine sucked in a breath through her teeth.

Alright. She'd stand up. Like some sort of invalid, she'd do her best.

She had to scoot to the very edge of the cot to plant the first foot on the ground. The motion itself didn't set her ears ringing—a good sign. But she could feel the blood pulsing through her head harder and harder every time she moved. To put it frankly, it felt like someone was sucking her brains out through her nose. Not the most pleasant of feelings, but at least it didn't hurt. Brains didn't in themselves feel pain, so it was, as she thought, an especially apt metaphor. A smarmy burst of glee filled her.

Yeah. Her head was okay. She could do this. The other foot found its way to the ground, and Amandine inched her way to standing. The headache didn't recede, but it didn't get _that_ much worse. Delicately, the way she set down a glass at a silent dinner table, she lifted her hands from the cot. She could stand. That was a start.

First, Amandine stepped to the other side of the closet the short way. She wobbled a little, had to stop, recollected herself, and continued on. The headache became less and less of an issue. Thankfully, it seemed, it wasn't a permanent issue—though why she'd thought it might be after that invasive line of questioning was a mystery to Amandine. She padded to the wall and slipped back into her shoes, slinging her jacket over her shoulder as she made her way to the door. Before heading out into the hallway, or whoever it was that led to the storage closet she'd occupied, she put it back on. She smoothed the blue frock over and picked at the collar of her shirt.

Here she was, perhaps minutes—or maybe hours, she hadn't asked—after collapsing when the voices gave her a good drubbing over the head. And she was just getting right back into the thrust of things. She was pretty sure that wasn't natural. But, then, what part of it was? She couldn't count the voices as something normal, either.

Speaking of voices.

The moment Amandine opened the door, the whispers began to leak in. They weren't normal voices. They were back, and they slipped in through her ears like snakes to occupy the dark recesses in her head she'd once thought sacred. Amandine jumped back, nearly losing her balance in the effort. Slamming the door shut, she leaned her forehead against the wall. Everything went silent again.

Was she _hiding_ from them? In a closet? She didn't know who'd brought her here, but it had to be more than a coincidence. The voices had nearly burst her brain, and now, here she was, recovering safe and sound. So be it in a dark closet, she was safe from the voices.

And that meant somebody must know.

Of course, finding out also meant leaving from her haven, and that meant throwing herself back for the voices to eat her alive. Lovely. A lovely set of options.

The pros? Well. There were all too many things she still didn't know—the first-day rituals, for example, or that professor that had stuck her in there. The not knowing gnawed at Amandine's insides almost as much as the voices had.

The cons, of course, were the voices, which threatened to give her a brain haemorrhage.

Amandine huffed to herself, pacing back and forth as she ran through her options in her head. Really, there was only one.

Amandine opened the door, and the voices flooded in once again. God damn, she had things to do.


	4. The Tigers and the Butterfies

**Chapter Four: Les Tigres et les Papillons**

_The Tigers and the Butterflies_

It was as though the world swept up around her. The halls were so alight with activity that no one seemed to notice another tiny, blue-frocked creature slip in amongst them. Color filled every touch of space, from the runners on the floor to the details on shirt cuffs and robe hems. Amandine could see it getting annoying, all the blues and the silvers and the golds, but for the moment, it was almost charming. The river of people was cobbled together of every sort of uniform—from the dresses, blue and buttoned down the front, worn over white shirts and white socks, to the boys in their blue pants and blazers and ties, to the occasional oncomer in full robes. She wasn't sure how the robe-clad folk managed not to look like they were drowning in cloth. Then again, hers had been a size or two too big. Her mother had said she'd grow into them, and the more logical half of her brain had to agree, but something inside her feared she'd stay the way she was forever.

Ha. But in this hallway, it seemed, everything was moving. There was no standstill. And like that, Amandine thrust herself into it, not entirely sure where she was headed. The murmurs in her head, though present once again, had at least the decency to blend with the ambient noise. At the level they whispered, she could almost pretend they were part of the more human murmurs occupying the air between the walls instead of the darkness inside her head.

She really did sound like she was going crazy. Even if searching out that professor was something of a wild goose chase, it was better than living on with a handful of new tenants in her head. They didn't even speak her language, now—though what they spoke now, or how they _had_ screamed at her, she didn't know.

Speaking of things she didn't know: why were the students milling about in the hall in the first place? That was an easy enough question to answer. She stood on her toes, peering over their heads in either direction. The closet door let out onto a brief landing, with stairs leading down on one hand and stairs curving upwards on the other. A gaggle of students ambled up the stairs onto the landing, so, naturally, Amandine looked the other direction. The stairs led up to a point she couldn't make out over the heads their occupants, who didn't travel far up them before stopping.

Amandine followed the cluster of girls upstairs. It wasn't long before they stopped—the stairs were steep to the point she suspected tripping and taking a tumble down down them would give her much more than a handful of bruises. Near the top of the stairs, students, seated and standing alike, formed a carpet over the wood. Stepping between them was more like dancing than walking, with pointed toes darting between hands and arms to patches of open space and arms splayed out for balance. Just like with dancing, too, Amandine proved terrible at it. Her balance still wasn't the best after having recovered from…whatever had happened to her, though she couldn't blame her flailing on that, exclusively. Her flailing, though, came to an abrupt halt when her eyes finally caught sight of the end of the hall.

It was a room. Stretching on through wooden doors like barricades, it was a dining room lined wall to wall with tables and benches and countless glasses lit in the dusky, fading light peering in through the curtains. That was just the beginning, though; the dining hall was unlike any single one of the cafeterias now fading in her memory. Blue drapes hung all about the room, colored nearly black like the midnight sky and dappled with uncountably many crystalline shards that seemed to float through the cloth. Past the molding, a mural of an angel falling—or was he rising?—into the heavens overtook the eye. The curtains fluttered around the room, a gust of wind beneath the angel's wings as he ascended.

Suddenly, there was a squeal in Amandine's ears. She whipped to face it, but in that interval, the squeal dropped to an excited babble. It was an excited babble Amandine knew. Helena. "Amandine," she yelled.

She was yelling from across the hall, and that was a distance of not more than twenty feet, but Amandine struggled to hear what she said next. In all honesty, she missed it altogether. Amandine danced her way to Helena, who rested against a wall amid a mass of other first-years, all of whom were just as overdressed as Amandine herself in capes and ribbons and ties. There was Helena, blonde hair pulled into a loose bun beneath her hat. Amandine waved back, and she watched as Helena's face lit up.

"What happened to you?" Helena said through a grin that seemed to swallow her whole. "You disappeared right after the ceremony."

Amandine nearly answered of her, but she thought better of it. "Never mind that," she said. "Have you seen any professors around?"

Helena shrugged. "Dunno. Why? You okay?" she hardly waited for Amandine's reply. "And, more importantly, how on _earth_ are you an _Aube_?" Helena rested her hands on her hips and glanced down at Amandine.

Amandine shifted—at least, as much as she could without stepping on someone's hand—and her eyes darted from scuff to scuff along the wall. "Helena, I'm fine. And I don't know what's going on with Aube. Maybe I've got some sort of hidden effervescence?" The reply was clipped and cloying, and she hoped Helena didn't pick up the staccato in her tone.

Helena twisted her lips around over the word. "Effa…?"

"Never mind." Of course. She didn't seem the bookish sort at all; the pencil smudges all over the heel of her left hand said otherwise, after all. Amandine brushed it off, and, somehow, she managed to stagger her way over to the wall without falling on anyone. She did scuff a couple heads, but all the trouble it earned her was a grumble of annoyance from a skinny boy in black quidditch robes—why, of all things, he was wearing them escaped her—and a pointed glare from some fluffy-haired girl she recognized from the carriage.

The boy against the wall next to Helena slid over, though there wasn't room in the first place. Amandine bowed her head a bit when she couldn't muster the courage to thank him out loud. He continued to ignore Amandine, again, parting ways after the briefest of encounters. Fine. Amandine turned to Helena without a word.

As though she'd been planning to say something, anyway.

A moment of silence passed between Amandine and Helena—evidently, even she could run out of questions—and the two stood with their backs to the wall, each shuffling her feet and trying not to step on any more fingers. As more space flickered into proximity, they grabbed it with hands and fingers and shoulders until Amandine could stand up straight again and Helena could afford a bit of a slouch.

Why was everyone insisting on packing into so small a space? But, then, why had _she_ bothered coming here? For whatever reason, she was sure it couldn't be helped. Amandine's eyes darted to the staircase again only to find it even more thickly carpeted with human bodies. Even she was beginning to feel nauseous with claustrophobia. The air hung heavy with the smell of human bodies, of perfumes and shampoos and sweat and laundry detergent. Somewhere in there, too, Amandine caught something spicy, like nutmeg, but she couldn't place it.

"I'm starving," Helena whined, breaking a silence as metaphorical as the room was packed.

Amandine turned back to her, and once again, the tables inside the dimmed dining room faded into focus.

"Aren't we heading to dinner?" said Amandine.

Helena shrugged. "That's what they said after they'd sorted the last kid. But I dunno why we're standing around. They said dinner would be ready, but all the lights are off, and there's no one inside. And I don't exactly see any food on the serving tables, anyway."

"Can't we sit down?"

"Do you see anyone else sitting down?"

"Are we _disallowed_ from sitting down?"

"Not as far as I know."

From the looks of it, everyone was just being a moron. Nobody sat down because nobody sat down because nobody sat down… it was a cycle with which Amandine was all too familiar. Amandine extended a hand up to Helena, and, with an arch to her eyebrows, Helena took it.

"If we get kicked out, we get kicked out," said Amandine, "But I've got a bit of a headache, and I'd much rather sit down." That wasn't the whole truth; in reality, she was just a little tired of standing up, and the headache had mostly subsided, but the voices' resurgence as a murmur in the back of her mind ached like a tender old wound. Even the most minor of annoyances seemed drastically more painful through the whispering filter.

"Wait. What?" said Helena. Her eyes widened, and she retracted her hand, but only lightly. Amandine didn't let her go. "Let's just wait until someone tells us to come inside. It's obviously not being used right now."

Amandine paused, her next words skittering across the tip of her tongue. "Yes," she said, "But the doors are wide open, and anyone with any common sense would know not to leave them that way if the purpose were to keep someone else."

"It's not worth it. Seriously. It doesn't matter. We can just wait a little."

"Let's just step inside and sit down. We won't eat. But I don't want to stand here a minute longer," said Amandine, tugging at Helena's hand. She could feel the glances of the other first-years on her back, but to them, Amandine didn't say a thing.

"Sure thing, Amandine," retorted Helena, "Let's go embarrass ourselves on the first day of school. Great idea." But she didn't resist.

They walked like ballerinas, wobbling on toes with their arms splayed out to keep balance. They darted between arms, between hands and feet and heads and hair. Somehow, it was easier this time; further from the wall, the crowd thinned as more space fell to bodies sprawled sitting on the floor. Out of instinct, it seemed, the students had cleared a half-circle around the doors. They were massive, foreboding, if Amandine had ever seen doors she could describe as such, and somewhere deep inside her, she could understand why the students hesitated to near them. The wood was dark, ancient, with knots like eyes that seemed to peer into the core of her body and, beyond, to her soul.

Even Amandine found herself hesitating when she and Helena reached the edge of the semi-circle of bodies hollowed out before the door.

"Second thoughts?' asked Helena. There was a tension in her words.

Suddenly, Amandine wasn't quite as interested in sitting down as before. But, then, glancing around… between the blue-clad girls standing in clusters and gossiping, jackets thrown over their shoulders, and blue-blazered boys roughhousing and making noises like apes, Amandine was having second thoughts about fitting in.

The voices whispered something, but Amandine didn't catch it—it was there, and then it was rushing away, all before she could grasp the words between the tips of her fingers. It was as though someone had thrown a sentence out only to fish it back in within a fraction of a moment. She strained, tuning back into the whispers, sifting through all the mindless babble, until something struck her.

The voices seemed pleased. Why or how, Amandine couldn't place, but they seemed upbeat, or, at the very least, smug.

Amandine shook her head. "No. No, let's go."

With that, she and Helena stepped through the door.

Amandine could feel time slow around her. For a moment, it was like walking through any other door—there would have been no difference, really, in the first few moments, had the angel on the ceiling not turned in that very first millisecond locked eyes with her. The angel wasn't the blond, blue-eyed sort her mother always complained about but a tan-skinned, dark-eyed creature with wings more tawny than white. His nose was slender but flat, pointed at the tip, and freckles splayed across it, fading at the corners of the darkest, most beautiful almond eyes Amandine had ever seen. She had seen Egyptians, and she had seen Swedes, but this man seemed to transcend earthly peoples. He was beautiful—but not in _that_ way—like a piece of fine art mounted over some celestial banquet. A tousled mess of brown hair curled over his shoulder and flew toward the heavens as he stretched his fingers out to touch a star. His feathers ruffled ever so slightly in an invisible breeze as he turned to meet Amandine's gaze.

Amandine nearly dropped to her knees.

It was then that the angel's hand splayed open and the candles flickered to life. It hit her: the room hadn't been dead, no, but rather, dormant. Waiting. And she and Helena had awoken it.

The curtains around the windows flew in a gust that overtook the room, bringing with it the glow of so many thousands of candles rising up from the tables to bathe the tables in a gentle, golden light. They sprung to life in waves and hung in oceans near the ceiling; and yet there was something unnatural to them, the way the flames hardly wavered at all in the wind that danced in the curtains.

The room filled with life. The dark had hidden the paintings, but now, they sprung to life. Where once there had been nothing but a beautiful angel trapped between heaven and earth, animals of every sort, from bears to lions to camels to salamanders, inched along in the grasses surrounding the filigree border around the angel. The creatures turned and glanced at them, too, but none had such lasting gazes as that of the angel.

Now bathed in light, Amandine couldn't help but feeling as though she'd been put under a spotlight. Helena, though, didn't shrink back; in fact, she seemed delighted with the new developments. Eagerly, Helena rushed toward the tables, inspecting the plates and the silverware and the crystal as though she'd grown up among wolves. Helena stood on her tiptoes, her mess of blonde hair falling in pale clots over her shoulders, sticking up in puffs here and there around her collar. She was a flurry of perfect disarray.

Amandine glanced over her shoulder. No one was watching. That was already a good sign. If what she remembered of the aftermath of the sorting ceremony was to be trusted, she'd collapsed just as she'd stepped offstage. She hadn't gotten away scot-free; someone, surely, had seen her. If there was a chance that someone saw her doing something odd again, her name would be out.

Amandine just wanted to lie low. That was all she wanted. No fame, no guts, no glory. Just a little anonymity and peace and quiet.

That, and she wanted to sit down. And then the candles had to light up the moment she and Helena walked inside, and a giant angel hat to stare at her, and—oh, she didn't care. Amandine took a seat atop one of the benches and slid her way down to the very end. Helena followed her and took a seat across from her. They sat next to the wall. Someone had placed a candle dangerously close to the curtain beside them, and Helena, after staring at it for a moment, pushed it a few centimeters farther from the cloth.

A few bold souls peeped into the dining hall. Some stepped back into the masses; others ambled in and took seats in clusters at one of the many tables lined end to end near either wall of the hall.

It was a long hall dappled with windows that stretched from floor to ceiling. Though they gaped out into the blackness, Amandine couldn't help but turn and stare through the one behind her. If she squinted hard enough, she could swear she could make out the stars reflected in a pool of water somewhere in the distance. The mountains carved out a jagged horizon against the blackening sky. They were the rotting, crooked teeth of some giant. Amandine felt a turning in her stomach.

She'd be eaten alive.

The dining hall filled up faster, now. It was no longer clustered droplets of students taking up their seats. A river of human bodies, most of which were clad in deep navy day robes, flooded the hall and clung to the benches. At the far ends of the hall, chaos reigned supreme over order: the clusters stuck to the middle, leaving only the lonely to straggle their ways through the crowds to either end. A milk-skinned strawberry blond took a seat next to Helena, and he was followed by a girl hardly older than Amandine with twin braids of coarse, wild hair. The girl smiled at Amandine from across the table, the resumed her conversation with the older boy. It had something to do with pumpkins.

Amandine's side, nearest the wall, took a bit longer to fill up, but she didn't mind. She stretched out her legs beneath the table—one of the few benefits of being so short, she supposed—and soaked in the stillness. In a room filled with such life and motion, the empty space beside her was near thrilling.

And then a rat scuttled up her sleeve, and she forgot what in the Hell peace had ever been.

Amandine couldn't help the screech that left her lips. There was a rodeo in her clothes. The little thing scurried up her arm, its tiny, hardened hands pressing into her skin like claws. It hurt. She shook her hand wildly in a hopeless attempt to fling it out, which only succeeded in scaring the creature up onto her shoulder. There, she scooped at it, but it dodged nimbly and leapt onto the table.

A laugh as nasty as the rat that elicited it followed. Amandine turned.

Some kid with black hair and a small, flattened nose snickered at her. Amandine nearly mistook him for a girl—a very convincing tomboy—with that delicate chin of his and those wide-set, almond-shaped eyes and those black, black lashes, but the moment he flung his hand out to catch his demotic little rat, she knew he'd never pass for a woman. His fingers were long, almost pretty, but they were coarse, too, and covered in bites and scars. It wasn't the scars, though, that gave him away, but rather the way he moved.

Even in as simple a task as scooping up a rat, there was something pointed to his motions. Amandine had never seen a girl so cold and clinical towards something so small—really, she'd never seen anyone so ruthless.

She could feel herself subconsciously bunching up against the wall in an effort to distance herself from the boy.

He stared at his rat a moment. It was tiny, almost the size of a mouse, with little white ears and a pink nose. Its body, black and slick with grease, looked like it could use a good scrub. There was something off about it, just as there was about the boy.

The fur. It was the fur. Had he dyed it?

It was almost as though the rat caught her staring. It turned its little head at her, even tilted it a bit, and the moment they locked eyes, a sense of unrest settled into Amandine's bones. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Helena's frizzball head shifting in her direction. Welcoming the escape, Amandine's eyes darted away, and she searched for something to say to Helena.

As it happened, she didn't have to. At that moment, the sylph of a woman Amandine had seen at the sorting ceremony—the headmistress—took to the far end of the room. Amandine had to squint to make out her eyes. All four columns of students clambered to their feet, silencing their chatter until the woman gestured for them to seat themselves again. A few whispers took root in the room, but the animated banter had died out.

Amandine stared at the menacing boy-slash-girl out of the corner of her eye. He did nothing strange, but Amandine couldn't help but keep an eye on him, even as the headmistress opened her mouth to speak.

"Students and faculty, I welcome you," said the headmistress. Her voice glinted like polished silver. "This day has, as have all past first days, been a nest of chaos, and I can't help but hope each year we all make it out alive."

This elicited snickers from a few of the older students.

"Of all days of our year, this, perhaps, is a day that most straddles borders. We welcome the new with the ways of the old—we foster tradition, and, yet, we usher in the harbingers of future change. From sorting," she extended a palm, and a few of the first-years cheered, "To certain… _other_ welcoming traditions," she extended the other palm, and now, it was the older students' turn to cheer, though Amandine, and Helena, too, it seemed from a shared glance, had no idea why, "We bestow upon our newest generations our traditions.

"And to this newest generations, I congratulate you, but I warn you all the same: you, too, will one day carry the burdens that come alongside shouldering tradition. Do your utmost to learn, to enlighten yourselves, because one day, you, too, may find yourselves seated in the very same seats as your elder peers. You do well to learn from them. And to the old and the young alike, take to heart what we've come together to achieve. We've gathered to learn. Don't waste these days of your lives. The very nature of humanity is ephemeral. Learn, live, do—while you're still here to do it.

"And so again, I welcome you. I've cautioned you, and I've congratulated you, so I might as well send you off. The sun's set, and the hours are dwindling, on tonight and on your summers, alike. Tonight is a night for celebration of the year to come. Enjoy yourselves now." Amandine swore a hint of mischief twinkled in the sylph's eyes. "While you still can, that is. Classes start tomorrow at nine o'clock, sharp."

A brief round of applause was cut short when the headmistress held up a hand. "I'm far from done. Now, we're heading into the boring part. There have been some changes in policy, recently, with regards to parts of the building itself. As many of you may know, this castle is something of a relic, but we try to allow students some degree of freedom. This year, however, please note that the innermost gardens will be closed off. We ask that students simply not climb the gate—it's locked, and it'll remained that way until we restore it to its former standard of safety. Thank you," she said as she floated off the stage.

The room steeped in a momentary silence before dinner floated in on countless silver trays. The voices had something to say about it, but they were quiet enough that Amandine could ignore them. Enough voices surrounded her, already. The choirs of wood nymphs had begun their first number, and the sound, sweet and soft like twinkling bells, echoed through the hall.

She grinned at Helena as a crystal bowl of something dark and fishy placed itself between them. Amandine filled her plate eagerly. She'd taken an early lunch, and given that the summer light was dwindling, it was late, now. The smell of food set her stomach growling. Rolls, soup, pasta—it was a feast. She passed up the fish soup and the roast chicken but passed eagerly at the noodles, which barely missed her. Pitchers of sparkling liquids of every hue passed her by, and by the time the food settled on the table, Amandine had tasted at least six, having settled on a golden one flavored like honey and tea.

The food almost pushed the boy and his rat from Amandine's mind. It was only as the rat resurfaced—from the boy's coat pocket, and Amandine felt sick at the notion—that she recalled their existence. The rat watched her from where it hung out of the boy's pockets. It was just a rat, she told herself. Just a little rat with little, beady eyes. But it unnerved her. Her head bobbed back and forth from the rat to her food as Amandine ate. She eagerly awaited the moment it looked away, but that relief never came.

After about five minutes, the boy turned to her.

"Do you need something?" he said, and Amandine could see the amusement he kept from his tone flickering behind his eyes. They were as green as envy. "You look like a chicken."

Amandine's blood froze. She hadn't been that obvious. Had she? Either way, she didn't want to talk to the boy-girl-boy, so she turned back to her plate and stared at it. It was empty, so she stared at the bubbles in her cup, instead.

"Whatever. You can be creepy if you want."

_Says you,_ thought Amandine. But she didn't say anything. Of course she wouldn't say anything. Why would she say anything?

Helena raised an eyebrow from across the table. Amandine shot her a half-frown.

Taking that as some sort of invitation, Helena leaned across to Amandine. "Was that a guy or a girl?" said Helena. Amandine shrugged. "Nice." After a moment spent staring up at the ceiling, Helena added, "And what's going on with those so-called 'welcoming traditions?'"

Finally. A question Amandine herself wanted the answer to. "No idea," she replied, throwing up her hands.

"Mm." Helena nodded through a sip of something red. She swallowed. "I think we're supposed to meet in the dormitories after dinner. It's probably something the prefects are doing. An announcement, maybe?"

"Ugh. Or some sort of let's-get-to-know-each-other game."

Helena laughed. "Hopefully not."

"Definitely not," interjected another voice.

Helena and Amandine stared at the source. It was rat-boy-girl. Helena stared at Amandine with a look of mild amusement.

Amandine said nothing. And then she had second thoughts. He looked her own age, and he sounded it, too. "And who, exactly, are you?" she said. The tone of her own voice surprised her; she'd expected it to be meek, tiny, not venomous.

The boy threw a haughty smile. "What if I told you it was a secret?"

Deadpan, she replied, "I'd think you're a moron."

As though they'd clipped his wings, he frowned at Amandine, then turned to address the both of them. "I'm Michel Amboise."

The name. It didn't help. Amandine didn't bother asking whether he was a boy or a girl, though; rather, she turned back to Helena and continued their conversation. "Seriously, though. I'm not eager to start playing name games. Especially with a bunch of _Aubes._"

But Helena wasn't buying it. She turned back to Michel, resting her elbows on the table. Somehow, the little rat of a boy had managed to intrigue her. "Why? What do you think it is?"

Great. She was ignoring Amandine. Amandine rolled her eyes, but she couldn't help tuning into the conversation. She did want answers. Even if the did have to come from as intimidating an androgyne as ratboy.

"A cruel joke," he said. "A dance of tigers and butterflies. And before you ask—yes. I'm sworn to silence. But do be warned."

And then he grinned like a shark.


End file.
